SSD drives

Did a check between SSD/Regular disc just a few mins ago reagarding the latency issue again, this time with/out traktor running (in a pseudo-scientific way proving that SSD _can_ decrease latency - probably most for us not-top-of-the-line-laptop-users):

Windows with no apps running: 2.0 - 3.0ms with regular disc
Windows with no apps running: 0.5 - 0.7ms with Intel SSD

If the performance is motivated by the price?
$200 for a really fast low-latency disc that will last me 2-3 years before it runs out of space - worth it, by my standards.

 

future

Hi,
just to inform you that the second generations of SSD drives is on the way to be ready to order at all major hardware producers ( incl. Apple ) and if somebody mentioned the Intel X25-M, the new SSD drives will rival this standard by many miles. Read/write speeds should be up to 250MB/s.
Peter

PS: I do work for a major computer producer.

 

Hmm, I take on Phil's thing about about your computer working for longer on loading the track into the buffer meaning it has (slightly) less cycles to do the rest of the Traktor stuff (for the couple of seconds it takes to load a track anyway 20 times an hour or so), but the above results suggest a 400% increase in total performance.

 

Latency is hardly what you would call total performance, but yeah I get what you mean. The thing is though there is a lot of other info needed about the test setup before you would call it definitive. Still, the results are interesting... and pleasing. As I said though YMMV.
What I want is a dual Port SAS connected next gen SSD. The user experience in winders 7 on one of those will make you moist.

Phil

 

Well, I don't believe in magic and I'm sure that there is a logical solution to my experience... but my latency really dropped that much... and to say that it's a 400% total performance increase is a bit hefty. When using FX and such, the CPU load still spikes the way it usually does.

I would imagine that a mid-level low-level laptop has less expensive circuits and controllers and therefore an increased latency... and the incredible read speed of a newer SSD combined with the extremely fast access latency can reduce the overall latency...

I have ordered a 30gb OCZ Vertex drive as we speak, and I will leave more detailed info as soon as I've played around with it some more.

 

It will be interesting to hear how you get on with the Vertex drive. I test that as part of the campatibility run I did a few weeks ago. Of all the drives tested that one and two new gen untos really shone brightly. When all is said and done though My two 15K SAS drives had SSSs for lunch overall despite being neck and neck in reads the writes (and the 8x PCI-e Caching Controller card ;-) ) really made up for it. Forget raptor drives go SAS if you are going spend big money on drives and portability isn't an issue Either that or you could leave your record boxes at home and start dragging around a CX3-80 or EVA8400 SAN, you could store all your musisic in 24 bit WAV format and probably still not need to break out of shelf 1. Of course the extra 2000 odd pounds you are now dragging around is not gonna fit on the passenger seat of your girlfriends Miata either, nor will it be easy for her to lug it up the stairs into the club on her own.

anyway let us know how you get on with the Vertex.

Phil

 

Indeed, most SAS solutions has insane preformance - but they are REALLY expensive, even compared to SSD's

 

Ohh the Geekiness
My Traktor is faster than your girlfriends Miata.

 

Geeky as it may be, I have a feeling that Traktor PRO+SSD = awesomeness.

As I said, I will return with a report as soon as my drive arrives.

 

Got my new Vertex SSD now... have just installed all of the neccesary drivers and is running one network interface (to be able to control the laptop using my other mouse & keyboard through synergy and my main computer)...

latency without traktor running is between 0.1-1.0ms... when running traktor it seems to be pretty rock solid at 5ms no matter what I do... also I've noticed that the CPU usage hasen't gone over 20% while using keylock+dual playback+chained effects (as opposed to cpu spikes of up to 60-70% with my regular drive - yes it sounds a bit strange but I'm using the exactly same windows release like on my regular drive with exactly the same drivers installed)

Oh... and the songs load and are ready to be played back in less than a second (buffering however doesn't seem to go any faster).


This setup hogs 3.2gb of drive space (traktor+drivers+windows).
My current collection is at 9,6gb which leaves me with a total of 17gb unused drive space.

If I countinue to buy songs at an average of 5-10 (read: 7) new songs per week at 15mb/each - 320kbps, this drive will last me little over 3 years before it's full.
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...also: playlist browsing is virtually lag-free no matter how fast i scroll the lists (I'm using the jogs on my VCI to scroll through songs and jump between playlists)
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update:

seems that I was suffering from temporary retardation/blindness during my last post... buffering IS a lot faster... I would estimate about 2x as fast as my regular disc.